Kunio Yanagita

Kunio Yanagita 柳田 國男
Kunio Yanagita, circa 1940
Born	Kunio Matsuoka (1875-07-31)July 31, 1875 Fukusaki, Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan
Died	August 8, 1962(1962-08-08) (aged 87) Tokyo, Japan
Nationality	Japanese
Occupation(s)	Bureaucrat, Folklorist, Scholar, Writer
Known for	Tōno Monogatari (遠野物語) Momotarō no Tanjō (桃太郎の誕生) Nihon mukashibanashi meii ("Japanese Folk Tales")
Spouse	Taka Yanagita (1904)
Parent	Yakusai Matsuoka (father) Naohei Yanagita (father-in-law)
Japanese name
Kyūjitai	栁田 國男
Shinjitai	柳田 国男
Transcriptions Romanization Yanagita Kunio

Kunio Yanagita (Japanese: 柳田 國男, Hepburn: Yanagita Kunio, July 31, 1875 – August 8, 1962) was a Japanese author, scholar, and folklorist. He began his career as a bureaucrat, but developed an interest in rural Japan and its folk traditions. This led to a change in his career. His pursuit of this led to his eventual establishment of Japanese native folkloristics, or minzokugaku, as an academic field in Japan. As a result, he is often considered to be the father of modern Japanese folklore studies.^[1]